


Fifteen Tons of Walking Tritanium

by cursedgeometry



Category: Borderlands (Video Games)
Genre: Developing Relationship, Feels, Love, Other, Robot Feels, Robot/Human Relationships, Robots, War, basically all the feels, let a lady love her mech you cowards
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-07
Updated: 2019-10-07
Packaged: 2020-11-27 03:08:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,349
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20941280
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cursedgeometry/pseuds/cursedgeometry
Summary: The first time Moserah Hayussinian Yan-Lun al-Amir Andreyevna saw Iron Bear, she swore he would be hers, and she his.





	Fifteen Tons of Walking Tritanium

"Iron Bear?" Moze takes a swig of her beer and eyes Barukh. "He's my best friend."

* * *

The mech seems impossibly large, the first time Moserah meets him. Large enough to blot out the sun, a planet whose gravity pulls her in.

Camouflage paint covers Iron Bear's bulbous cockpit and parts of his legs and arms. Huge red pauldrons jut from his shoulders, each with a white star. Moserah Hayussinian Yan-Lun al-Amir Andreyevna stares up at him, eyes drinking in every detail, wondering what it would be like to pilot him.

She won't get to. Homeless Promethean kids don't get good corp tech.

A rifle butt catches her in the small of the back. Moserah stumbles but catches herself before she falls. "Get on w'yeh," the recruiter snarls. "Don't gawk."

She picks up the pace. The Vladof recruiter gets paid by the head, no matter the condition of those heads. But she sneaks glances over her shoulder at Iron Bear.

This is the moment, young as she is. The moment that she swears Iron Bear will be hers, and she his.

* * *

She's so jittery, that first battle.

Moze thought she knew what to expect. Her drill sergeant had spent months drumming tactics into her. But real combat speeds up her heart and sends sweat from under her helmet into her eyes.

She blinks away the salt sting and lifts her assault rifle. Bullets pour out of it. It sings to her, but it's not the song she wants to hear.

The counter fire intensifies. "Armor units forward!" her squad leader calls. "Suit up!" Fucking finally. She leaps and tightens her left fist.

Iron Bear digistructs around her, envelops her.

He's warm, excess heat seeping into the cockpit despite his state-of-the-art dissipators. His five-point harness wraps around her.

"Don't get used to that mech," the drill sergeant had snarled. "We'll take it back when you fall."

But she's not going to fall. Not with Iron Bear protecting her.

Moze wraps her hands around Iron Bear's controls. Enemies rush towards her and her squad. "Here they come," she says, and winces. Her voice shakes like a leaf in the wind.

Fuck that. She squeezes a trigger and Iron Bear's miniguns spool up. _There's_ the song she wanted. She leans forward and Iron Bear leaps into action, powerful legs pounding the dirt, carrying them both forward.

* * *

"You're mech-dazzled," Barukh says.

Moze blinks owlishly at him. She's five—no, six—beers in and conversation is hard.

They deserve to be drunk, after the last mission. The Hestia drop had gone sideways immediately. The turrets that no one expected chewed up flesh and shredded tritanium. Yochim, Issachar, Judith—all dead, blood seeping into the rocky ground, their Iron Bears split open like over-ripe fruits.

Not Moze. Not her Iron Bear. He'd thundered while she screamed, wills merging into one. A red haze had blanketed her vision, and when it cleared, Iron Bear stood in a charnel house. Every step he took was over dead bodies.

She should care.

She doesn't. She and Iron Bear made it through. That's what's important.

"What do you mean?" Moze asks Barukh.

He jerks a thumb at her Iron Bear, standing sentry over them. "I've seen how you dote on that thing. Won't even go into town for R&R with us."

"He's better company than you lot," she says.

Barukh burps, and Moze leans back from his fragrant breath. "It's a tool. A vehicle with weapons. Might as well care about a rock."

One moment Moze is sitting, and the next she's standing. Her knuckles throb in time to her heart. Barukh writhes on the ground, blood gushing from his nose.

* * *

They told Moze to take care of him. Said that he'd take care of her.

Both true statements. Both incomplete. They were so much more than that together.

* * *

Moze wakes up to a world that bobs and sways. She's in Iron Bear's arms, his heavy treads carrying them.

"Bear?" She can't see where they're going in the dark. She misses his night vision. "Bear!"

He stops. Heat from his miniguns warms her against the chill night air. He's fired them recently.

Moze knocks on his cockpit. "Show me."

His video feed flickers to life, holograms filling the air.

Ratch. The animals had crept up on the squad while they slept. When their acidic spit had come close to her sleeping form, Bear had scooped her up. He'd fired his miniguns in short bursts to keep from burning Moze.

He wasn't supposed to run.

He wasn't supposed to value Moze's life over his directives.

Iron Bear's cockpit remains closed. He's hiding himself from her.

"Let me in," Moze says, and surprises herself by adding a, "please?"

Iron Bear opens up, more slowly than usual. She nestles into her seat. He molds it to the contours of her body, mindful of the cuts and bruises that cover her like a report of their recent missions.

She sinks into him, and he into her, and they are complete.

* * *

"It's not yours."

Moze's fists tighten, though if she could punch her way out of this, she'd have done it already. "The fuck you say. We've fought together in over fifty missions. I've _earned_ him." Paid in sweat and blood and pain and terror and exultation.

"Not even close." The quartermaster won't look at Moze. "You know how much Vladof paid for them?"

"He's mine."

"He's matériel, not a soldier's keepsake. You can't have it."

Moze wants to cry, she's so frustrated. But she keeps her sardonic mask in place, hiding her true self away. "You've got newer mechs. I saw the shipment. You're just going to scrap him."

The quartermaster studies Moze's face. "You ask Field Marshall Kaziak about keeping your mech?"

She has. It's why Moze is talking to the quartermaster. Kaziak's sending them to Darzaron Bay. A suicide mission.

She considers running. She can get away. Give Vladof a middle finger and fight for someone else.

But not with Iron Bear.

She considers her life alone.

"One more drop." She leans in close. The quartermaster doesn't move, a mouse in front of a snake. She bares her teeth. "And then _he_ is _mine_."

* * *

Moze throws herself into Iron Bear's cockpit. She rests her hands on his controls. They're worn to fit the curve of her palm. They respond instantly to her fingers' flutters.

She shifts, her pauldron scraping against cockpit padding. She'd patterned it after his, a physical reminder that she's connected to him.

He revvs, vibrations thrumming the seat that caresses her legs and molds between her thighs. He knows her. She knows him.

Moze rests her worn helmet against her hands. She's tired beyond explaining, but the job remains. Iron Bear remains.

Iron Bear is all that matters.

"One more drop," she tells her mech. Her partner. Her everything.

He responds with a roar, turbines spooling up, saying clear as a sunlit morning: _ready_.

She doesn't want this. She's about to throw them into a meat grinder. Worse, a metal grinder. She could lose him.

"You sure?" she asks aloud.

His engines rev louder.

"We do this, we do this together." She swallows, throat thick with feelings she cannot voice. "Together, right?"

His turbines thrum.

"This goes sideways, you—" She cannot finish the sentence.

He doesn't let her. His five-point harness pulls tight, a hug made manifest. He pops a schematic up on her HUD. An escape pod. His nosecone can eject with her in it. She could live to fight another day.

Fuck that. She waves it away. "You and me," she says. "Together. All the way. No matter what."

The control stick jumps beneath her hand. Text scrolls across her HUD: "N O M A T T E R W H A T"

She will not cry. She is Moserah Hayussinian Yan-Lun al-Amir Andreyevna, and she has her best friend and true love wrapped around her, and she is not afraid.

"No matter what," she whispers, and then she yells, her lips pulling back, and Iron Bear's guns chatter, and they rush forward into the future.


End file.
